Tributes pour in for 'the 35mm Marquis de Sade'

Tributes were paid yesterday to the distinguished fashion photographer Helmut Newton, whose stark, often sado-masochistic portraits of nude women in chains and bonds won acclaim and caused revulsion.

The German-born Newton, recognised as a trailblazer in the photography world, died when his car went out of control and crashed into a wall outside the entrance to the celebrated Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles. He was 83.

Lord Snowdon, the photographer and former husband of Princess Margaret, said that he was "greatly saddened" by Mr Newton's death. "I admired Newton's work and knew him through his pictures for Vogue," he said. "He was incredibly professional. His work was always different and very highly finished. His death is a great loss to photography."

Helmut Newton was born in Berlin to a wealthy Jewish family in 1920. He fled Germany in 1938, becoming a photojournalist for the Straits Times in Singapore before moving to Australia and joining the army. After the war he opened his own photographic studio in Melbourne.

Dubbed the "35mm Marquis de Sade" because of his controversial, highly sexed photographs often featuring bondage gear, Newton began contributing fashion photography to French Vogue in 1961, a magazine that he made his own for a quarter of a century. He also specialised in portraits of the glamorous and the beautiful, including Elizabeth Taylor, Claudia Schiffer and Mick Jagger.

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He had been married to his wife, June, who is 80, for more than 55 years. The couple were unable to have children.

David Bailey, the British photographer who was also photographed by Newton, said that his legacy was enormously important. "Newton redefined the nude. He made women look powerful and strong and influenced thousands of people through his work."

Mr Bailey added: "We had a love-hate relationship but he was a very amusing and very clever man. I shall miss him a lot."

J. G. Ballard, the author and a personal friend of Newton, described the photographer as "a genius".

"I was a passionate admirer of Helmut," he said. "I admired, above all, the power of his imagination. He created a unique dream world using little more than a few beautiful women and a selection of beautiful clothes, and yet that dream world is one of the richest in 20th-century imagination.

"He was the greatest figurative artist working in his day. Many photographers, including David Bailey, have tried to imitate his uniqueness but not as successfully."

Ballard, the author of novels such as Empire of the Sun and Super-Cannes, said that the glamorous nature of Newton's exit - outside the star-studded Los Angeles hotel where he often set his photographs - was "almost something I could have written".

He added: "I talked to Helmut only a few weeks ago when he was in Monte Carlo and just about to leave for Los Angeles. His death is a great loss but at least he lived to a great age and went with some style.

"He was a delightful companion, mischievous and forever young. I envied him enormously: he spent his life in the company of beautiful women and his own extraordinary dreams.

"Far from debasing his models, which Newton was sometimes accused of, he placed them at the heart of a deep and complex drama where they rule like errant queens, blissfully indifferent to the few men who dare to approach them.

"Newton's photography has endured for decades, as poetic and mysterious as when it first appeared in the 1960s."

Newton's Australian-born wife, June, is also a photographer and works under the name Alice Springs. He often featured her in his photographs, including nude studies of her engaged in mundane tasks such as putting laundry out to dry.

He was said to have been attracted to powerful people and described Margaret Thatcher, one of his subjects, as one of his "sexiest" subjects.

He had also professed a desire to photograph Camilla Parker Bowles. When asked why, he replied: "I like powerful women and she has power over your future King."

David Jenkins, who interviewed Newton in June 1999, said: "He was mischievous and naughty, interested in making sexy shots rather than depicting nice, banal girls. He had been ill for a number of years with heart problems and used to get very depressed about it, so crashing outside the Chateau Marmont was, perhaps, a better and more fitting way to go."

Tiggy Maconochie, a London-based photographers' agent who has represented Newton for 16 years, said that although the cause of death had not yet been determined, she understood that Newton had suffered a heart attack while at the wheel of his Cadillac.

Miss Maconochie added: "He was inspiring to work for. He had a great sense of humour and never took himself seriously. He had incredible focus and he really loved women. Anyone who met him came away with a sense of amazement at his charm and grace. But he also liked to shock. Like a lot of great artists, he had an innate sense of playfulness.

"It has come as such a shock to me because he was such a vital and healthy person. His death will be completely devastating for his wife June. They did everything together. She was his toughest critic and she art-directed all his books and created all his major exhibitions. It's just incredibly sad news."